Dr Meera Varadharajan

Meera Varadharajan is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) at University of New South Wales. Her PhD examined the experiences and contributions of career change professionals who transition to teaching in schools. Meera's doctoral and subsequent work on career changers to teaching has been recognised by leading teaching bodies, and she has received both external and internal research grants including from the NSW Department of Education. She has written several papers and has published a book on career changers.

Meera's current role at CSI involves leading and managing research projects and program evaluations across diverse social issues that impact society. Her works also involves designing program logic and facilitating Theory of Change workshops to help organisations build their social impact and outcomes measurement. Examples of policy driven work include research on:

• Education: addressing teacher shortages in science and mathematics by attracting professionals from STEM backgrounds,
• Housing: examining the housing and service delivery experiences of people living in social housing,
• Health: examining the innovative responses by emergency services sector to meet health and infrastructure needs of vulnerable groups during COVID,
• Cultural diversity: addressing the issue of cultural diversity in the philanthropic sector and its impact on recipients seeking funding. 

Examples of evaluations include impact of:

• program to support youth through mentoring,
• program to reduce recidivism among indigenous youth,
• program to improve the well-being of carers during COVID. 

Meera has also published policy informed factsheets on teacher well-being and home learning and has led pre-election policy briefings on education.  As a qualitative researcher, she is passionate about connecting human stories and experiences in her work to drive purposeful social change in society.

Her civic contributions include being an Advisory board member for the UNSW Gonski Institute of Education.